Tracking a 25 minute song

I'm in a fantastic band that has great songs, musicians, and overall decent guys. Everyone in the band is in their early 20s...except me. I'm in my early 30s. We are in the process of having enough experience and material to push for a record deal and all the other things a young, excited band wants from the world.

One disagreement I'm having with them is the idea of investing time and money into tracking a 25 minute song. All of our songs at this point are in the 6-10 minute range (prog band,) but I'm opposed to putting this on an EP, for which we already have 5 songs coming in around 40 minutes, excluding this long one. I've reached out to my local musical mentors and they all have advised against it. The two tracks we have released independently are good, but even my fiancé says she doesn't listen to more than a couple of minutes of either song when it comes into her Spotify playlist. People are engaged with our live shows and we have sold well both putting on our own shows as well as opening for touring acts. We have received good feedback from touring bands that are, for lack of a better phrase, players in the game.

I feel the egos are getting in the way of progress. I'm worried someone who mixes a 25 minute song will get bored and half-ass it, and a label will view us as pretentious. I've been playing in bands for 16 years now and have made my mistakes, and I don't really want to make the 20 year old mistakes I made when I was 20 years old, when resources weren't as readily available. If I knew the answers, I wouldn't be asking, so if anyone has input that I can give back to my band, I'd appreciate it, since everything else I've presented regarding this hasn't been taken seriously. Thanks TB friends.

Record companies are good for one thing these days: promotion. Yes, they can generate sales. If that isn't as important to you, why not produce and release the album yourselves? You've obviously done some if not all of the leg work already with the release of your 'singles'.

Record companies are good for one thing these days: promotion. Yes, they can generate sales. If that isn't as important to you, why not produce and release the album yourselves? You've obviously done some if not all of the leg work already with the release of your 'singles'.

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We're after the promotion and connections a label can provide. Our monetary resources are limited.

Back in the day when we were shopping around we spoke to execs at many different labels. The number one bit of advice was... get to the chorus. It doesn't literally mean to bring the chorus along as fast as you can (obviously different genres don't apply), but they said they'd listen to probably 10 seconds of a submission and that was enough to decide if it was time to keep listening or time to throw the CD away.

A 25 minute track can be really cool, but be really, really careful. Without knowing anything about you or your band, I'd say leave it off. Unlikely any label will spend half an hour (and probably $200+ of their time) listening to your really cool track.

We had a track that was 9 minutes on our EP; after those discussions we cut it down to 4 minutes and got much better feedback.

a 25 minute track is par for the course for a prog band. I fully endorse it. Some prog bands have made this easier on the listener by splitting the epic into smaller tracks that all flow together. At the end of the day, a 25 minute song is a few smaller songs strung together.

But yeah, a prog band can do long tracks and should. I think the nay sayers are just being weak.

I think the concept is cool, and would be a good "deep track" for an album. It would also be interesting to try and record (breaking it up into sections? Nail it in one take?). But if the purpose of the EP is to label shop, then leave it off. Save it for when you guys have the time and the budget to do it justice.

Obviously prog-rock's not my thing. I can't imagine listening to, or playing, a track for 25 minutes.
If that's an accepted norm within the genre then sure, go for it...but I'd imagine only record labels specialising in this would even consider listening to it...and I can't imagine there's that many labels like that.

A 25 minute song is fine as a prog band (I’ve played many half hour and longer pieces and have been in bands playing many long pieces with the usual 6 to 10 minutes long tunes).

If the music sufficiently carries it then the song works. “Change of Seasons” by Dream Theater was 23 minutes and it fit right into all the other stuff my last band was doing so it wasn’t a big deal. Same with all of 2112, or Relayer, or Suppers Ready.

The nice thing about prog is no one cares if the song is a half hour or a full hour long, as long as it works. Ask Jethro Tull, or ELP, or Neal Morse, or Yes, or Rush, or Dream Theater or...

The only issue I see is the expense. Whereas you can cut basic tracks for 2-5 minute songs without trouble, 25 minutes will require recording it in sections and splicing. Not difficult, just time consuming and you'll probably spend way more dollars per minute for that track than the shorter ones.